"Vampires of Eastern Europe" by Alexander Volkov, summary

This book is a historical, cultural, and folkloristic study published in 2015. The author focuses on the gradual humanization of the mythical bloodsucker. The character’s journey from a disembodied evil spirit and bloated cemetery corpse to a respectable aristocrat, romantic hero, and full-fledged member of modern society.

The book was published in the "World of the Unknown" series by Veche Publishing House. This series also includes the author’s other works: "From the Lives of English Ghosts" (2014), "Scary German Fairy Tales" (2014), "The Horrors of French Brittany" (2015), and "Ghosts of Russian Estates."

Origin of the term and vampire epidemics

The origins of the image lie in the beliefs of the peoples of Southeastern and Eastern Europe. The word "vampire" itself spread to the West in the 1720s and 1730s thanks to reports from Austrian officials and doctors investigating outbreaks of panic in the Serbian villages of Kisilevo and Medvedja. These included the cases of deceased peasants Petar Blagojević and Arnold Paole. The reports of administrator Frombald and surgeon Johann Flückinger documented exhumations: the autopsied bodies of the deceased were found to be incorrupt, swollen, and filled with liquid blood.

The root "upyr" (ghoul) is recorded in Slavic texts much earlier: in 1047, the Novgorod scribe Upyr Likhoy (Ghoul Likhoy) was mentioned, and in the 14th century, the word appears in the "Serb of Gregory the Theologian." However, it was the Serbian epidemic of the 18th century that sparked a pan-European debate among theologians, court physicians, and philosophers of the Enlightenment.

The sacred nature and ambivalence of blood

The phenomenon stems from a particular perception of blood in traditional societies. In ancient cosmogonies and religious teachings, blood is identified with the life force and soul. The Old Testament explicitly forbids the consumption of blood, instructing that it be poured on the ground, as it contains the soul of a living being. In Babylonian, Greek, and Scandinavian mythologies, people, monsters, mountains, and rivers emerge from drops of divine or demonic blood.

Blood is ambivalent: it bestows health and simultaneously carries a mortal threat. In ancient and medieval medicine, the warm blood of gladiators and executed criminals was drunk to cure epilepsy. Menstrual blood inspired superstitious horror and was associated with curses and pestilence. Pagan sacrifices served as "feeding" for the deities, sustaining their energy. Christianity overcame this practice by offering the sacrament of the Eucharist, where believers partake of the Body and Blood of the Savior.

Historical and mythological types of bloodsuckers

In history and folklore, blood consumption is divided into voluntary union and forced conquest. Scythian, Irish, and Slavic brotherhood rites were based on the mixing of blood for the sake of an unbreakable oath. Forcibly drinking the blood of an enemy on the battlefield was practiced to crush the spirit of a defeated opponent.

Historical tyrants and serial killers were gradually endowed with vampiric characteristics. The Wallachian ruler Vlad III the Impaler, nicknamed Dracula by the knightly Order of the Dragon, was portrayed in 15th-century German pamphlets as a ferocious torturer. Later authors attributed to him a delight in the sight of blood, although the motif of drinking it was absent from authentic texts. The Hungarian Countess Elizabeth Bathory was accused of torturing her servants, but the legend of her regular baths of maiden blood for eternal youth took shape much later than the 1611 trial. In the 20th century, the vampire’s reputation was adopted by mentally ill maniacs like Peter Kürten and Fritz Haarmann.

The appearance and habits of the Eastern European vampire

The folkloric vampire differs significantly from the literary character. In the folk beliefs of the Serbs, Bulgarians, Romanians, Poles, and Ukrainians, the vampire is not a refined aristocrat, but a "walking" corpse or an evil spirit possessing the body of a deceased person. He lacks deathly pallor; his face and eyes are red from drinking blood, and his body is bloated like a sack.

In Slavic demonology, potential vampires included those with double souls, sorcerers, suicides, apostates, and infants born in an amniotic sac. A vampire doesn’t always bite its victim with fangs: in folk tales, it presses on the chest of sleeping people, strangles them, pierces the skin with its sharp tongue, or strikes them in the back. Furthermore, in the Balkans, vampires were believed to cause droughts, spoil livestock, and steal moonlight during eclipses. Garlic, blackthorn, and the sign of the cross served as protection against the monster, while a radical method of destruction included driving an aspen or oak stake into the heart, beheading, and burning the remains.

The evolution of the image in literature and cinema

In the 19th century, Romanticism transformed the nature of the vampire. John Polidori, in his novella "The Vampyre" (1819), created Lord Ruthven — a pale, cynical dandy with an icy gaze who conquers society salons. Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, in his novella "Carmilla" (1872), added elements of psychology and sensual attachment to the plot.

Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897) codified the classic canon: a fear of garlic and crucifixes, wall-walking, transformation into a bat, lack of reflection in mirrors, and forced blood exchange. German film director Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau, in Nosferatu: A Symphony of Terror (1922), introduced a new detail: the vampire’s death by the morning sun. In 1931, Bela Lugosi cemented the image of the black-cloaked Count on screen, and Christopher Lee, in his Hammer Films films, added a feral aggression to the character.

In the second half of the 20th century, science fiction and popular fiction finally eliminated the mystical fear of the dead. Richard Matheson, in his novel I Am Legend (1954), explained vampirism as a bacterial infection. Anne Rice, in The Vampire Chronicles, made monsters reflective intellectuals, tormented by their own immortality. In the Underworld, Twilight, and Vampire Diaries series, bloodsuckers act as superheroes, organize secret clans, and replace human blood with donor or synthetic blood.

Eroticization and psychological interpretations

The convergence of bloodlust and sexual desire occurred through the transfer of mythological notions of the life force into fiction. A bite on the neck became a metaphor for erotic possession, and the vampire was transformed into an ideal lover, endowed with eternal devotion and hypnotic charm. Popular culture developed the image of a noble protector who overcomes his dark nature for the sake of his beloved.

Rationalist theories attempted to explain the phenomenon through physiological and psychological factors. Doctors linked the genesis of the myth to a rare disease — erythropoietic porphyria, which causes photophobia, thinning of the skin, and exposed gums. Other researchers pointed to the fear of premature burial during cholera and plague epidemics, when those who fell into lethargy were buried alive. At the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries, the concept of "energy vampirism" emerged, where physical blood sucking gave way to psychological pressure and manipulation.